Women’s Work in Space

By: | November 5, 2013

quilting...in...space....

Astronaut Karen Nyberg arrived at the International Space Station on May 28. On Sunday, she’ll leave for home. In the five months she’s been up there, she’s worked on studies of the human microbiome and how combustion works in zero gravity. She’s helped move a Soyuz capsule from one dock to another and worked on a leaky space suit.

She’s also made a nine-by-nine-inch quilt square.

NASA put out a press release last week inviting people to join her by making their own star-themed quilt squares and submitting them for a display at next year’s International Quilt Festival in Houston.

Quilting. In space. Could the manly test pilots of the 1950s have imagined such a future? But there she is, blonde and Minnesotan and explaining how she manipulated fabric in zero gravity. Continue reading →

Dancing in the streets

By: | November 4, 2013

5763661987_fd498126a5This is the game my older son and I played this weekend. He would bolt into a four-lane thoroughfare, and I would shout and jump around: “Get out of the street! It’s not safe! GetoutgetoutGETOUT!” Then I would dash into the street after him and we would laugh and laugh. And then he would pretend he was the grownup, and I was the kid, and he would yell at me. And we then laughed some more. Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | November 2, 2013

plateOctober 28 – November 1

This week, Erik told us to eat the most delicious little bastards in the ocean.

Why is the moose population dwindling? Roberta investigated.

I wonder if we can ever agree on a single truth without paying the price.

Ann showed why looking at the universe only in the optical wavelengths is like hearing only the flutes in a Beethoven symphony.

And Abstruse Goose explained why you can’t change minds if you don’t know the science.

A Crappy Little Bastard That Tastes Great

By: | November 1, 2013

shutterstock_151205837Four years ago, no one in Punta Herrero had ever seen a lionfish. Certainly someone in the tiny village halfway between between Cancun and Belize would have noticed the fish. Not only are they elegant and showy, with their striking spines and bright red stripes, but they hurt like hell when you touch them.

The venom on those pretty little spines usually isn’t fatal but it can shorten your breath and hurt for days. Fishermen in the village say they started small, just a few fish at a time. They were an oddity but nothing to worry about and certainly no threat to the lobster fishery that drives the tiny communities up and down the Yucatan. Continue reading →

The truth about truth

By: | October 31, 2013

hiveMy most recent foray down the internet rabbit hole involves the idea that we are now living in the year 1717, rather than 2013.

At some point in deep early time, the theory goes, someone (accidentally on purpose?) tacked 297 years onto the calendar. It’s known as the Phantom Time hypothesis, and it was put forward in the late 1980s by Heribert Illig and Hans-Ulrich Niemitz, after the two German historians began to wonder about the stunning number of forgeries attributed to this early period of the Middle Ages. What could explain the lack of authentic historical records?

Like all really juicy conspiracy theories, the idea is supported by some pretty creepy circumstantial evidence. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII sought to update the old, imprecise Julian calendar with a new and improved version humbly named after himself. Here’s what happened next:

He removed ten days from the new calendar to correct for the chronological drift caused by the old Julian calendar’s imprecise rules for inserting leap days. The Julian calendar had been introduced during the time of Julius Caesar, in 45 BC. However, a ten-day shift corrects for just 1,257 years’ worth of accumulated error. Subtracting 1,257 from 1582 gets us back not to 45 BC but to 325 AD. In other words, more than three centuries are unaccounted for! Continue reading →

Too hot for moose

By: | October 30, 2013

MooseOver the last few weeks, stories of moose die-offs have made the news. The New York Times reported that one moose population in Minnesota has all but vanished and another has fallen by more than half. Similar declines have happened in New Hampshire and British Columbia.

While scientists aren’t sure of the cause, they suspect climate change is behind the deaths. Hotter weather has encouraged the proliferation of winter ticks, which can swarm a moose by the tens of thousands and provoke it into scratching off so much hair that it turns into a pale “ghost moose”. Warming also favors pine bark beetles that destroy forest canopy, allowing hunters to spot moose more easily. And heat-stressed moose may fail to build up enough fat for the winter. Continue reading →

Not Shilling for NASA But Really, This Is Good

By: | October 29, 2013

hs-2013-44-a-printAstronomers irritate the hell out of me, NASA’s in particular, not the people but their press releases: never met a superlative they didn’t like, Biggest Black Hole, Farthest Quasar, Youngest Galaxy, and on and on, far into the night.  The black hole’s size isn’t interesting unless it says something about how galaxies form.  The quasar’s distance and the galaxy’s youth aren’t interesting unless they’re evidence for when and how galaxies formed.  The rule is, discoveries are interesting only in their contexts.  And in general press releases are less interested in context than in shock and awe, e.g., “NASA’s Great Observatories Begin Deepest Ever Probe of the Universe.”  Let’s agree to ignore “deepest ever probe” and concentrate instead on those Great Observatories because NASA has a plan for using them and really, they’re good. Continue reading →